


A Tale Told over Four Drinks

by Chibihaku



Series: Kalasin Lavellan [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, I despise tagging my own work, In Hushed Whispers - aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-04-01 21:56:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4035979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chibihaku/pseuds/Chibihaku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Boss' been quiet ever since she got back from Redcliffe Castle. Bull decides to find out why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tale Told over Four Drinks

**Author's Note:**

> Cross post from Tumblr. Pure fluff that was written on a bad day.

The herald has been quiet ever since they returned from Redcliffe Castle.

Not quiet in the normal way, either. She normally was the sort of quiet of a person listening, ready to ask a question that cut to the heart of an issue, ready to learn and absorb new information, drinking up facts like they were water and she was dying of thirst.

He can sort of see why - he doesn’t think she’s had much experience out of the clans, the way she asks about every damn thing, of him and Krem both. (He also sees her speaking to Harrit as he’s bent over an anvil, and later, again, with a hammer in her hand and a bashful grin.) She’s willing to learn anything someone will teach her, and willing to try herself when no-one shows her a skill - he’s watched her trying to sew a patch in her overcoat one afternoon and making a hash job until Krem took pity on her and showed her how to do it right. She didn’t take offense, just watched and let him correct her until she got it.

But this quiet is different. This isn’t the quiet of someone who wants to learn, this is the quiet of someone trying to shut off. She spends a little too much time at the stables, grooming the horses with a homesick look in her eye, goes out wandering a little too far when she’s not needed in the village proper. She’s shutting down, even as the mages are preparing for the assault on the Breach.

Part of Bull wonders if it’s because of the Breach that it’s happening - not the Breach itself, but the inherent expectation that she needs to succeed, but he dismisses it quickly. She doesn’t look at the Breach any more or any less than anyone else in the Inquisition, and when she does, it’s with an expression that’s more like quiet defiance than fear. She’s been set a challenge, she’ll see it through.

No, this is something more, something insidious that started clinging to her at Redcliffe and hasn’t let her go. He saw the first of it when she’d stepped back out of the rift and said the first angry words he’d ever heard her say, the way she flinched when the Seeker or himself spoke, the pain in her eyes when she looked at Leliana later. She’d let the Vint explain what happened, and then retreated away somewhere, behind a carefully constructed wall that most people wouldn’t even see.

He’s not most people.

And he has a plan.

That it is a plan that involves alcohol is more coincidence than management. 

—

The first drink is possibly the hardest because there is an element of luck involved. He brings Krem to the Singing Maiden, takes a seat at a bench towards the back and waits for the Herald to come on her daily visits. She doesn’t deviate from her routine of visiting them often, but sometimes something will call her away before she greets each of them, so the luck is whether or not she’s able to come in and chat to Sera today.

The elf, of course, isn’t in on it - she’d blow it as soon as the herald walked in, asking her some well-meant question or another that completely missed the mark and had a string of blue language tacked on the end. And that would send the herald further into whatever shell was around her - because damn if the woman didn’t clam up any time someone tried to get her to talk about herself.

But luck is with Bull tonight - the tavern door opens and in stepps the little redhead, coat hugged about herself for warmth, arms folded across her chest. He watches her speak to Sera - Orlais’ Red Jenny says something that makes her blush to the tips of her ears and stammer a reply, which sends Sera into a fit of laughter. “You are way too fun to poke at.” She says, and it carries over the tavern, a little louder than it should be. 

The herald’s ears twitch, she leans forward and hisses something at the other elf, who laughs again and waves her away. 

The Herald sighs, turns, and catches sight of Bull watching her. A puzzled, slightly suspicious frown flicks across her face, and he waves her over. 

“Have a drink with us,” He says, gesturing between Krem (who is cheerfully bringing over his second pint, and a spare) and himself. He sees a moment of indecision flick over her face and she looks him up and down, one eyebrow raised and saying more than she wants to about what she thinks of the situation. She thinks he’s planned this, and she’s right. “We’ve got a spare and it’s going to go to waste.”

Her gaze goes from suspicious to sharp, almost accusatory, and for a moment he thinks he’s lost her. However, her unshakable politeness wins out and she delicately sits on the other side of the bench to him and takes the tankard.

And the trap draws closed.

—

The second drink is half-empty and the talk is winding around to relationships. Sera, grudgingly, has joined them, and she’s telling an entertaining (if implausible) story about the first time she had someone else, and Krem is grinning, which is never a good sign.

Sure enough, the question comes. 

“And how about you, Lady Herald?”

Kal (The first drink finally got the girl’s name, and a flat refusal to let Bull give her a nickname other than the one she already had) looks like a halla in the way of a carriage - eyes wide and shocked, lips slightly slack. Then she relaxes, shrugs, and asks, “The first time I kissed someone, or the first time I was with someone?”

“Both.” Bull lets his elbow rest on the table, hand up near his face, legs spread wide. 

She turns her head to look at him, hums, and says “The first time I slept with someone, it was a boy named Revas in a field. It was all very terrible and little worth remembering,” the corner of her lip twitches up. “It was even worse the next morning when my halla stepped on parts of him that shouldn’t be stepped on.”

Bull lets out a booming laugh, “And the kiss?”

She shrugs, “Siaorise, that one was a little better - she was a little older and knew what she was doing.”

Bull looks sideways across the table at his lieutennant, who’s face has drawn into something almost a pout, would be a pout if Krem wasn’t too manly for it. Bull grins, “Your turn to get the drinks, Aclassi.”

Krem lets out a sigh, “I really should know by now it’s stupid to bet against you.”

“Ben Hassrath, remember?”

“Wait,” The herald’s expression switches suddenly from mildly embarrassed to downright horrified. “You were  _betting on my sexuality?_ ”

“Why wasn’t I in on it?” Sera says, sounding offended, “Oh, nope, never mind. I would have picked you as girls only.”

“I really don’t think that’s appropriate - ”

“Relax, Boss. Krem just lost, which means he needs to buy us the next round.”

—

The third drink comes with dancing.

Bull doesn’t, of course. His leg is stiff and sore after the hike through Redcliffe and he’s happy just to watch as Krem spins the Herald through a complicated series of steps. She’s surprisingly graceful, and the alcohol has given her enough of a buzz that she’s forgotten to hide her smile. 

Krem’s grinning as well as he grabs her about the waist and lifts her in the air, she kicks out her legs and Bull allows himself a moment to admire the line of them - long and shapely, tapered by a life of hard walking. She’s flexible, too, Krem bends her back and she goes, breaking into a giddy little giggle as he pulls her back up and dances her across the room.

She looks over her shoulder when Krem whispers something into her ear, and grins at Bull, tilting her head, shoulders loose and relaxed. Her smile is a soft thing, something all the more precious for being rarely seen like this - loose and genuine and carefree. It makes her look softer, somehow, and slightly crooked when he thinks of her scar and her broken nose.

Bull frowns and looks down at his drink. The alcohol shouldn’t have been anywhere near strong enough to put a warmth in his gut like that.

—

The fourth drink brings a flavour more morose. Krem's gone back outside to their camp and Sera has wandered off to places unknown, and Bull and the herald are sitting on the same side of a table in a slowly emptying tavern. She sighs, fingers playing with a ring of water on the tabletop.

“So what’s up?" 

She looks at him, eyes slightly glazed over. "I knew you were up to something.”

“I always am.” He tells her, “But usually it’s things a lot less simple than ‘find out what’s eating the Boss’.”

She lets out a little puff of laughter, then her expression falls. She turns her gaze back to her hands, watches her fingers trace through the water ring, drawing patterns on the table.

He waits.

“I saw you die.” She says at last, “In the future. I saw you and Cassandra leave to fight off the demons while Dorian tried to work out that amulet, and then I saw your body.”

“Oh.” Well, that was unsettling, he was ready to admit. 

She leans against his arm, her forearm pressed against his, the shaved side of her head tickling against his bicep. She’s warm - he doesn’t know where her coat has gone, but her undershirt is a loose, flowing cotton, and the heat of her through it is something he definitely doesn’t want to be paying attention to right now. Especially not when she’s talking about demons, and impossible futures.

“You went out there to fight them and I couldn’t stop you. And I couldn’t stop Cassandra.” Her voice is soft, slightly choked. “And then - ” She lets out a small sob.

He frowns and moves his arm so that he can wrap it around her and draw her into his side. She rests her forehead on the side of his chest, he puts his chin on the crown of her head. “You stopped it, Boss.” He says. “You made it so it never happened.”

“Leliana died in front of me.” Her voice is quiet, he has to strain a little to hear it, “Buying us time. I told her about it, and she said that she would do it again.”

“In all fairness, so would I." 

She stiffens and pushes away from him, he lets her go. She stares up at him, expression almost angry. "I don’t want  _anyone_  to do that for me.” She snarls. “I - ”

“You stopped it.” He says again, letting his face soften. “That’s a pretty damn big thing. Fuck, I’d be offended if you’d tried to stop me from helping you stop it.”

She glares at him, savage little cat that she is. 

“Besides, way I see it, we were saving ourselves, weren’t we?” He raises his eyebrow, “Some of the shit that went down there, no wonder I wanted to make it so you came back and fixed it. Probably wasn’t even doing it for you at all.”

She relaxes, swipes a hand through her hair, “That shouldn’t make me feel better.”

“But it does.”

She casts her eyes down to the side. Her lip quirks. “It does.”

—

The fifth drink is water at the tavern, and so is the sixth that he makes her sip as he walks her back to the Chantry. She’s a little lopsided, leaning on him to help stay upright, and he finds that whatever closeness there was before has slipped through his fingers like sand. It’s like the coat is a layer between them, some defense from the outside world.

It would explain why she wears the damn thing everywhere.

He opens the door to the Chantry and helps her inside, looking around at the near empty hall, with it’s low burning candles. Her room is tucked away in one of the side cloisters, he takes her key from her when she fumbles with it, presses a hand to the door and gestures her inside.

She sits on the bed and he looks at her, pouring another drink from the pitcher on the sideboard.

“No more water,” she complains, “I’ll explode.”

“Better than a hangover tomorrow, though.” He tells her, holding the cup to her lips. She sips obediently, and he ignores the inappropriate twitch in his gut. “You should get to sleep, Boss.”

He puts the cup on her sideboard and turns his back as she strips down. He moves towards the door when he hears her settling in the blankets, but a soft call of his name when he reaches the door makes him stop and turn.

She’s looking at him through glazed eyes, already half closed. “Do you think I’m the herald of whatsherface?” She asks, all pretense of knowing even the basics of the Andrastrian religion fleeing from her in the face of a combination of tipsy and tired. 

He considers lying, but doesn’t. “No,” He says, “I don’t.”

“Oh.” She sounds almost disappointed.

“But you don’t have to be a herald to be special.” 

She gives him a crooked grin, “You’re a big softie.”

“If you weren’t drunk,” he tells her, “Or if anyone else was around, I’d protest that.”

“Softie Bull.” She says again, but the words are slurred, and her eyes are closing.

“Softie Bull.” He agrees, pulling the door shut behind him, walking away, and laughing under his breath.


End file.
